[littleacorn]

Hi everyone wondered if anyone can help ....

I have a light sussex cockeral with 4 unrelated light sussex hens all a similar age and the girls have been laying for a couple of months.  The cockeral is definately mating with all 4 (dirty backs are a definate giveaway!!).  

A few days ago when we had finished feeding we were doing our daily observations and realised that the cockeral was stood on the back of one of his girls and 2 others were pecking her.  We shooed him off and she seemed fine, didn't run away, no bleeding etc.
  
Last night when we went to feed up, one of the girls seems to have injured her leg.  She seemed happy enough so I fed her in the pen away from the others whilst I did all the pens and decided what to do with her/where to put her.  As I passed the pen with a watering can I realised the cockeral was stood on her shoulders, her head was on the ground, and he was pecking her head.  I knocked him off her and removed her to a nice cosy pen of her own.  

Obviously not sure if this is the same hen, does anyone know whats going on?  BTW the cockeral is fine with us not aggressive, lets the ladies eat first etc ......
 
Thanks Julie  

[princesspiggy]

isnt he just mating? my hens have bald heads, and one had her skin ripped off by a too larger cockeral but luckily healed quickly. have the hens got enough space to run away or cockerals can get a bit much for them.

[Buffy the eggs layer]

Hi Little A,

       lowering the head is a submissive gesture in chickens and is also a gesture used by hens to instigate the cockerel to mate. Unless the pecks were particularly agressive then It could be that the other dominant birds were responding to the subjugated position of a low ranking hen during the mating and couldnt resist putting her in her place . Sussex are a notoriously broody breed and therefore the other hens may have wanted the male to mate with them as they are planning to establish a clutch. My Sussex broody litterally runs to the cockerel as soon as she has layed her egg of the day and elbows the others out of the way. She mirrors his behavior and repeatedly assumes a mating position until he treads her.

If the hen has an injured leg I would put her out of harms until you have assesed the damage and then either keep her out of the cockerels reach or lock him up for a couple of days. Its unlikley that the leg was injured during mating if the cockerel is not too bid and heavy for the hens but bearing his weight during mating wont do the leg any good if she struggles to put weight through it. It would seriously affect her ability to balence and that would explain why she had her head on the floor. This would also affect the cockerels ability to get his balence and achive the correct position to mate which would explain why he seemed to be stood on her without mating.

I would suggest, taking the cockerel out of the group for a few days, sorting the injured leg out and observing the group dymamics between the hens before reintroducing the male and continuing your observations.

Buffy

 

[littleacorn]

Thanks for replies.

Buffy that is a great explanation, very helpful.  As you can probably tell, although I have kept a few hens for years, I haven't kept a cockeral before so all new to me. 

Julie